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Reflections on Digital Dualism & Social Media Research from #SMSociety13

I am frustrated by both Digital Dualism and the fight against Digital Dualism.

Digital dualism is the belief that online and offline are different worlds. It shows up relatively harmlessly when someone calls a group of people who are on their devices “antisocial,” but it is much more harmful in the way it pervades the language we use about online communication (e.g. “real” vs. “virtual”).

Many researchers have done important work countering digital dualism. For example, at the recent Social Media & Society conference, Jeffrey Keefer briefly discussed his doctoral work in which he showed that the support that doctoral students offered each other online was both very real and very helpful. I think it’s a shame that anyone ever doubted the power of a social network during such a challenging time, and I’m happy to see that argument trounced! Wooooh, go Jeffrey! (now a well-deserved Dr Keefer!)

Digital dualism is a false distinction, but it is built in part on a distinction that is also very real and very important. Online space and offline spare are different spaces. People can act in either to achieve their goals in very real ways, but, although both are very real, they are very different. The set of qualities with which the two overlap and differ and even blur into each other changes every day. For example, “real name” branding online and GPS enabled in-person gaming across college campuses continue to blur boundaries.

But the private and segmented aspects of online communication are important as well. Sometimes criticism of online space is based on this segmentation, but communities of interest are longstanding phenomena. A book club is expected to be a club for people with a shared interest in books. A workplace is a place for people with shared professional interests. A swim team is for people who want to swim together. And none of these relationships would be confused with the longstanding close personal relationships we share with friends and family. When online activities are compared with offline ones, often people are falsely comparing interest related activities online with the longstanding close personal ties we share with friends and family. In an effort to counter this, some have take moves to make online communication more unified and holistic. But they do this at the expense of one of the greatest strengths of online communication.

Let’s discuss my recent trip to Halifax for this conference as an example.

My friends and family saw this picture:

Voila! Rethinking Digital Democracy! More of a “Hey mom, here’s my poster!” shot than a “Read and engage with my argument!” shot

My dad saw this one:

Not bad for airport fare, eh?

This picture showed up on Instagram:

It’s a glass wall, but it looks like water!

People on Spotify might have followed the music I listened to, and people on Goodreads may have followed my inflight reading.

My Twitter followers and those following the conference online saw this:

This fractioning makes sense to me, because I wouldn’t expect any one person to share this whole set of interests. I am able to freely discuss my area of interest with others who share the same interests.

Another presenter gave an example of LGBT youth on Facebook. The lack of anonymity can make it very hard for people who want to experiment or speak freely about a taboo topic to do so without it being taken out of context. Private and anonymous spaces that used to abound online are increasingly harder to find.

In my mind this harkens back a little to the early days of social media research, when research methods were deeply tied to descriptions of platforms and online activity on them. As platforms rose and fell, this research was increasingly useless. Researchers had to move their focus to online actions without trying to route them in platform or offline activity. Is social media research being hindered in similar ways, by answering old criticisms instead of focusing on current and future potential? Social media needs to move away from these artificial roots. Instead of countering silly claims about social media being antisocial or anything more than real communication, we should focus our research activities on the ways in which people communicate online and the situated social actions and behaviors in online situations. This means, don’t try to ferret out people from usernames, or sort out who is behind a username. Don’t try to match across platforms. Don’t demand real names.

Honestly, anyone who is subjected to social feeds that contain quite a bit of posts outside their area of interest should be grateful to refocus and move on! People of abstract Instagram should be thrilled not to have seen a bowl of seafood chowder, and my family and friends should be thrilled not to have to hear me ramble on about digital dualism or context collapse!

I would love to discuss this further. If you’ve been waiting to post a comment on this blog, this is a great time for you to jump in and join the conversation!

4 thoughts on “Reflections on Digital Dualism & Social Media Research from #SMSociety13”

Thanks for the thoughts and mention, Casey. I like your notion of blurring, as blurring implies that clear distinctions, such as those that promote digital dualism, have exceptions and result in a messiness. This reminds me of John Law’s After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. All this mess reminds us that our research opportunities increase as we seem to otherwise know less due to the clear boundaries (online and offline) vanishing (if they really ever existed).

I’m often struck by the kind of blank page effect at the beginning of some projects- that moment when you second guess the data and the fruit it bears. But then the deeper you look, the richer it grows.

I hope I can go next year! And catch the vegetarian restaurant & boat tour…